Derdâ said, “Black T sent me. You have an envelope for me.”
And she dropped Black T’s bag on a low coffee table between two leather armchairs. The Jamaicans looked up lazily at the bald girl, their heads still moving to the rhythm of the music.
One of them said, “It been a long time since a skinhead visit us.”
Another one: “It been a long time since we beat a skinhead.”
The third: “You go on, Bob!”
As Derdâ jumped back to the door, the three men cracked up laughing and Bob started barking. One of them stood up, saying, “Don’t worry, we don’t have rabies like you people,” and he pulled the bag off the coffee table and unzipped it. Derdâ made a mental note. She had to figure out just what sort of shit these skinheads got themselves into. The Jamaican pulled three half-kilo bricks out of Black T’s bag. He looked at the others.
“Anyone wanna try?”
Only Bob answered. Towering over Derdâ, his dreads swaying down around his waist, the Jamaican said, “You wait for me here.” He picked up the three bricks and left the room. The other two went back to bobbing their heads. Derdâ wasn’t worried. She was sure the man would come back with the heroin. At least she hoped for so much.
Then a Jamaican looked up and said, “Who was dat man?”
“What man?” the other said.
“Dat man just sittin der. He just left. You know him?”
“No.”
“Den what was he doing here, man?”
“I don’t know, I thought he was your friend.”
“I don’t know him, man!”
“He seems irie, man.”
They looked up at Derdâ and one said, “Black T sent you, right? So give us the goods and let’s see how it is.”
Derdâ’s mind went cold.
“I just gave it to you. Your friend just left with it …”
“We don’t know dat guy. But you know him, right? Why else would you give the bag to him? You know him. No matter, now give us de stuff and we check it out.”
Derdâ’s heart went cold.
“What are you talking about? I just gave that guy the stuff and he asked if anyone here wanted to try it … You really don’t know him?”
“No,” the two men said.
Derdâ’s entire body went cold. She could feel the beads of sweat forming on her forehead.
She grabbed her head and cried, “What am I going to do now?”
The two Jamaicans looked at each other. But they couldn’t keep the act up any longer and burst out laughing.
“You really must be a skinhead,” one said.
The other: “How could anyone be so dumb?”
Derdâ wanted to strangle them but she threw herself down in the armchair and asked for a cigarette. Laughing, one passed her a joint. The harshness in her face softened as she lit the joint and soon enough she was laughing along with them. The rhythms of Desmond Dekker filled the room and it seemed, if only for a short while, that they were all genuinely happy. As the joint moved round the room every now and then one of them imitated Derdâ: “And what I going to do now?” And they cracked up, laughing all over again, replaying the scene again and again, laughing every time, until their friend came back with the three bricks of heroin.
“It’s alright,” the Rasta said, handing Derdâ an envelope.
She stood up and took it. The others got up to say good-bye. Derdâ patted Bob on the head—a dog as mellow as the man he was named after—and left the room. On the ground floor she saw the Jamaican watching the door. As a woman came out of the toilet, the Jamaican turned to Derdâ and said, laughing, “You wanna go? A special price for the lady.” Derdâ thanked him for his offer and left the house. She stepped through the line outside and walked back through the carnival where she hailed a taxi and set off for Chelsea. She gave the driver the second address written on Black T’s card. After a few blocks they pulled up to a ten-story apartment and Derdâ got out of the car. She found the apartment number on the panel beside the door and rang the bell.
A muffled voice crackled through the intercom, “Who’s there?”
“Delivery from Black T …”
A sharp metallic snap stopped her before she could finish and Derdâ pushed open the door. She thought of the Jamaicans and everything that had just happened to her on the elevator ride up to the eighth floor. She started laughing. She was still laughing when she rang the doorbell to apartment 33.
Regaip opened the door. Her eyes shot open in shock. Derdâ stopped laughing.
Regaip grabbed Derdâ by the collar and pulled her inside. Then he slammed the door shut.
“Is anyone following you?” he said in a strange English accent.
“No, no,” Derdâ stuttered. She noticed the gun in his hand.
Derdâ stood before her father. A man who had nothing but blood on his hands to prove it. I’ll be fine if I just stay calm. Give him the envelope and leave, she thought. She struggled to stay calm and collected. Regaip hadn’t recognized her. In the last sixteen years he’d spent no more than five days with his daughter. The last time he’d seen her was five years ago. Derdâ had shaved her head since then. He doesn’t recognize me, she thought. And there was something he didn’t know. Something else that had come between them: cocaine.
A week after Bezir had been killed, Gido called Regaip and told him to rent a new flat and hole up there with a year’s supply of food. “Don’t leave until you hear from me,” he ordered. They had a cop on the inside who had told Gido that the Dulluhan brothers got the MI5 onto them. His only advice on the matter: “Make yourself scarce.”
And Regaip did just that. But
